Pressure on Brazil president

TEMER: NEWSPAPER REPORT CLAIMS LEADER DISCUSSED ‘HUSH MONEY’ PAYMENTS

Denial, but meatpacking giant boss told he must ‘keep paying’.

Brasilia

Brazil’s President Michel Temer faced calls for his removal after a newspaper reported that he had been recorded discussing payments of hush money to a corrupt politician.

Temer immediately denied the report in O Globo newspaper.

According to the report, which could not be immediately verified, an executive from the meatpacking giant JBS, Joesley Batista, met with Temer on March 7.

During the meeting, the report said, Batista recorded himself telling Temer that he was paying money to buy the silence of disgraced ex-speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha.

Cunha is in prison after having been found guilty of taking millions of dollars in bribes in Brazil’s giant Petrobras oil company embezzlement scandal.

According to the account, Temer told Batista: “You need to keep doing that.”

Temer’s office issued a statement saying: “President Michel Temer never solicited payments to obtain the silence of former deputy Eduardo Cunha.”

O Globo did not say how it got the information about the recording, which it said was offered in a plea bargain between Batista and his brother Wesley with prosecutors.

Temer took over last year after the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff, a political earthquake to a large extent engineered by the then-powerful Cunha.

There were immediate demands on Wednesday from leftist opponents for Temer’s removal. The Workers’ Party issued a statement also naming five other parties that called for his resignation and snap elections.

Several hundred anti-Temer protesters gathered in Sao Paulo, while in the capital Brasilia motorists honked horns and yelled “Temer out!”

Congressman Alessandro Molon, from the Rede party, filed a demand for impeachment with the speaker of the lower house, Rodrigo Maia.

Maia made no comment to reporters as he left for an emergency meeting with the government, O Globo reported. –